What Must Remain Public? Essays on Privitization, the Consitution, and Public Administration

Dancan Warner

Date of Award

2004

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Social Sciences

First Advisor

Lewis, Eugene

Keywords

Privitization, Private Prisons, Administrative State, Non-Delegation Doctrine, Government

Area of Concentration

Political Science

Abstract

Questions regarding the proper role of the state and the activities that it should perform are central to American political debate. The privatization of governmental functions is often conceived of as a part of this debate, although it does not necessarily represent a reduction in the scope of governmental activity. Rather, privatization raises questions as to the governmental nature of certain activities; can private actors legitimately perform state functions, or are there some powers that are so central to the identity of the state as such that they must remain within direct governmental control? Are there functions that the state must perform because only it has the authority to do so? The items in this portfolio span three years of my education and are tied together by the central theme of state power and authority. The first part of the project is a research paper on prison privatization, which discusses the development of prison privatization and explores the relationship between corrections corporations and the policy process. The second essay discusses the non-delegation doctrine, a principle of constitutional law that is intended to ensure that legislative power is retained by popularly elected officials in Congress. In the third paper, I again deal with the separation of powers in discussing the constitutional issues associated with the exercise of discretion by bureaucrats. The final essay discusses Woodrow Wilson's idea of a politics-administration dichotomy and its inapplicability to modern public administration. Overall, these papers come together to formulate an argument that there are core state functions, such as incarceration, that are inherently governmental and therefore should not be privatized.

Rights

This bibliographic record is available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication. The New College of Florida, as creator of this bibliographic record, has waived all rights to it worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law.

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